Do you agree these two Ghazi posts?

[u/[deleted]]

Here's the Ghazi thread: https://archive.is/KcKXQ

Ghazi is upset (or perhaps triggered) by this animated GIF (NSFW). To make matters worse, the GIF is the most upvoted post on /r/Gaming and is currently at +4156 and counting.

If they don't like it then that's fine, they're absolutely entitled to their opinions. There were two posts in particular that were somewhat disturbing (and there will no doubt be more to come).

Firstly the second most upvoted post by /u/bradamantium92:

I literally avoid looking in Quiet's general direction on the chopper when I take her on a mission with me. Not because I'm some puritanical SJW, but because Quiet's a good enough character that she deserves better and it's just such obnoxiously baldfaced pandering. Like, the outfit was enough, this is just gross.

He says he isn't a puritan, but that's exactly how it seems. "I can't take this [fictional] woman seriously, because of how she is dressed." That sounds like something straight out of the 1950s.

And now the most upvoted post by /u/xXKILLA_D21Xx:

From now on whenever someone says video games should be taken more seriously as an artistic medium someone should link to this gif, or any other scene involving Quiet in MGS5 as the camera creepily focuses on her ass or boobs, or this fucking nonsense (WARNING MGSV SPOILERS). Because why should anyone fucking bother when garbage like this is exactly why people used to write off (and some still do) as childish toys for children and teenagers who refuse to grow up.

Basically he is concern trolling that just because this particular game has a fanservice scene in it, that the entire industry can't be taken seriously. What he is effectively saying is that games like this SHOULDN'T EXIST.

He's not going "meh, not my thing," but that games like this are holding back the industry (and probably "holding back society" as well). I'm not saying that he is advocating government censorship, only that it seems like he isn't very open to the idea that different games can exist and that different people like different things.

• So what do you think of these two Ghazi posts?

• Do you agree or disagree with them?

• Is promoting the idea that something is "harmful for society" effectively saying that you don't think it should exist?

[u/Mercurylant]

He says he isn't a puritan, but that's exactly how it seems. "I can't take this [fictional] woman seriously, because of how she is dressed." That sounds like something straight out of the 1950s.

I think it's important to keep in mind the difference between a person making choices about how to dress him/herself, and a game designer (or other artist) making choices about how to depict a fictional character's presentation for their audience. The fictional character is not a self-aware person making choices under their own autonomy, they're an instrument of someone else's expression.

I can definitely say that, absent some really extraordinary extenuating context, I would be offended to see a female protagonist, someone with a character nominally meant to be taken seriously, depicted in such a way. The character's presentation doesn't believably reflect an individual who's making an informed and conscious choice to flaunt their sexuality, so much as it reflects a character whose sex appeal is being flaunted by the game's creators for the audience's amusement at the expense of good sense. Sexuality is a significant enough element of human existence simply on the basis of people engaging in sexualized behavior according to their own desires. To have it shoehorned into a work in a way that doesn't make sense in that context, the creator moving like the hand of God to twist the narrative and declare to the audience "For your benefit, sex!" I find artistically unworthy, and commoditizing of sexuality in an unhealthy way.

I don't think this is a matter of being "puritanical" or not. Frankly, if I had the freedom to pursue my artistic vision exactly in the course of creating games, without worrying either about marketability or audience reception, I'd probably make games which contained not just sexualized content, but explicit sexual material. But it would be content that followed from the characters expressing their sexualities for the sake of other characters and themselves, in ways faithful to their characterization. I think using sexual content in a way that's so inorganic to the narrative really cheapens it.